I was poking through my email looking for a reference article on China’s plundering of the oceans when I came across some comments made recently over at Scribbler’s site. Now before I get into a discussion on these comments, I need to say that I am not anti-technology per se, but there are very serious problems with technology as it’s utilized in the current socio-economic paradigm we have – capitalist industrial civilization. We have become a society in which techno-optimism is dangerously ingrained in our thinking and culture, especially in the United States. I just discovered the work of Dr. Michael Huesemann by way of an excellent interview he did on this subject. His book Techno-Fix: Why Technology Won’t Save Us Or the Environmentcame out just last year. I’m going to break down the Huesemann interview in a later post with all the salient points he makes.

Now to get to the comments, the first one sets a dire but realistic tone…

Viewed from a purely biological perspective, humans are following the optimal foraging theory whereby an organism exploits sources of food with the highest energy content first. In terms of humans and industrial civilization, the most energy dense source right now is fossil fuels. This partially explains why we see the following news-bite:

One of the big problems with so-called renewable energies is that, as I pointed out in the last post, intermittent and diffuse energy sources cannot support the current energy-intensive, high consumption way of life promoted and exercised by capitalist industrial civilization. This isn’t a matter of politics, it’s a matter of physics.

Yes there are too many of us. Just as with any organism which has overshot the carrying capacity of its environment, there will be no soft landing for humans when the laws of ecological balance cull our numbers. Modern man has dominated the Earth to the point of altering the biosphere on a planetary scale, destroying the once stable climate which allowed our clever (not wise) species to proliferate. Did humans think they could continue to rack up an ecological debt without consequences? Governments can print money, but the Earth cannot print forests, arable soil, healthy oceans, and clean air.

Rather than seek solutions to the root of the problem – our unsustainable mode of living and exploitive socio-economic system, techno-optimists will look to geoengineering for a fix which, even if such a “solution” would initially appear to “work”, will inevitably have unforeseen side-effects. Then other techno-fixes will be deployed to fix those unintended consequences, and so on.

So Scribbler responds to the above comment:

When, pray tell, are we going to suddenly be gifted with a sustainable system with which to apply our technology? From where I’m sitting, just the opposite is occurring. Governments are becoming more corrupt and totalitarian, printing money with abandon and hardening their surveillance state apparatus. The global human population is exceeding the growth estimates of the United Nations. Extreme weather events are accelerating. And yet business-as-usual persists with the requisite talk of growth and expansion in every economic periodical and newscast. Albedo management? What the hell is that – installing millions of snow-making machines in the Arctic? Since when has anyone on this site ceded to a “defacto business as usual mindset”? We’ve talked of nothing but changing the mindset of a system hellbent on converting every last bit of nature into digits on an accounting ledger for Wall Street.

Then the following comment:

Dave, you’re harassing a techno-optimist monkey in his self-imposed cage of normalcy bias and delusion. Don’t do that. He’ll just sling shit at you, as we’ll see:

He finds the reports “radically too pessimistic”. Did he check the backgrounds of those people behind the reports? Sorry, but I’ll take their decades of experience and education over Scribbler’s childlike foot-stomping of the bad news being too scary for his delicate ears to bear. And the cheap name-calling of “modern incarnation of Ludditism” is simply a scapegoat for avoiding root causes, as Dr. Huesemann explains:

Labels like Luddite distract from an objective and scientific examination of technologies and modern societies… What Luddites did in the past is irrelevant to our critical analysis of technologies today. Many technologies facilitate exploitation by creating a safe distance between exploiter and exploited…

To clarify for Scribbler what my previous post was about since he evidently did not read it or comprehend it, the post was not about saying that all energy technologies are bad, but an explanation of their limitations due to the reality of EROEI and the laws of Physics. As Kevin Moore noted, “Geochemistry overrides ideology.”

Now having said all of the above, I appreciate Scribbler’s climate tracking expertise and hope he continues his writings.

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About xraymike79

I'm a social critic, political/cultural commentator and artist. The modern industrial world is on the cusp of great changes to our current unsustainable way of life. Most people are oblivious to the paradigm shift that will occur, but some are starting to awaken to the fact that the future will not resemble the halcyon days of the last half century in America as evidenced by the OWS movement. My objective is to highlight important news stories and find the truth that is hidden behind what Joe Bageant called the American Hologram.
www.collapseofindustrialcivilization.com

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86 thoughts on “Techno-Optimism Vs. The Laws of Physics”

It may sound odd, but I’m convinced that what we’re seeing across the Middle East is the denial of the laws of physics, brought to physical reality by politicians and people in some kind of deathwish collusion. They collectively and violently insist that their problem is political: get rid of that leader, and follow this or that dogma and all will be well. They have locked themselves into a struggle they think is about religion and politics, but they are fighting for basic survival.
The real survival battle is over resources, and as such we can watch it as our dress rehearsal. The Egyptians are fast running out of everything.
They had to import food, and subsidise their basic economy at a rate of 30% even when the country had a kind of stability and healthy tourist trade. Now the chaos has crashed that, leaving an unemployment rate of 30%. But their 80 million people are still demanding cheap food while half the population lives below the world poverty level of $2 a day. They can only feed 55 million, yet their population is set to grow to 160 million in 35 years. It won’t happen of course, I leave to your imagination to the horrors by which their numbers will be brought under control.
This is the real chaos of Egypt, and can only get worse. It is a nation in sub-prime.
Handouts from Saudi can never be repaid because they don’t have the means of earning money. But they delude themselves that ‘growth’ will return. It can’t.
Transfer that thinking to any country you like, and what we see happening in Egypt is a dress rehearsal for the rest of us 5—10 years down the line. As our resources run short, the price of food will go through the roof, as will fuel. That crashes our economy just as Egypt’s economy has crashed.
What we are witnessing here is our own future, as resources deplete in western economies, we too will riot and depose leaders. They will also declare martial law and use the army to crackdown on ‘dissidents’. Politicians refuse to accept reality so react in the only way they know. There are too many people chasing diminishing resources; violent conflict is inevitable.http://www.endofmore.com/

Yes, nothing odd at all. In fact, any article about Egypt should begin with the information you just mentioned.
I went to Egypt on a Navy ship over 30 years ago. We learned there were 60 million people, then, and there was only a little ribbon of fertile land along the Nile then, as now. We guys talked about how that was unsustainable. Insanity. And we were mostly just young, ignorant sailors then. How is it we knew more than these talking heads in TV today that never, ever mention how unsustainable a country is like that. Without Saudi money, it would be an Arab Haiti.
Are journalists and foreign policy analysts told not to mention how impossible Egypt is?

…What is happening in Egypt is a precursor to a wider global war between the world’s elites and the world’s poor, a war caused by diminishing resources, chronic unemployment and underemployment, overpopulation, declining crop yields caused by climate change, and rising food prices…

…The belief systems the oppressed embrace can be intolerant, but these belief systems are a response to the injustice, state violence and cruelty inflicted on them by the global elites. Our enemy is not radical Islam. It is global capitalism. It is a world where the wretched of the earth are forced to bow before the dictates of the marketplace, where children go hungry as global corporate elites siphon away the world’s wealth and natural resources and where our troops and U.S.-backed militaries carry out massacres on city streets…

Just imagine the reaction from Western Gvts and MSM if Russian or Chinese or Iranian or N. Korean any other ‘disapproved’ State slaughtered unarmed protesters in this manner. Or if Mubarak had slaughtered the middle class westernised bourgeouis facebook arab spring protesters in this manner.

Isn’t that the excuse why the MSM told us we had to intervene in Libya, to STOP this happening ? and in Syria ? and in Mali, and long before that, in Iraq ?

I think many moslem groups all over the ME, Central Asia, elsewhere, are manipulated by unscrupulous forces, Saudi Arabia, Quatar, all kinds of crazy sheiks with agendas and money, and all kinds of subversive agencies from foreign powers, Mossad, CIA, FSB, MI6, everybody wants control over oil and gas pipelines and wants to fuck up other people’s plans.
My guess would be that this massacre will be the best possible news for thr really radical moslems who hate America and the West and Israel. It’s a clear demonstration of the hypocrisy and violence and injustice that America stands for, and it will provide fabulous propaganda for recruiting jihadis.

Some people will see that as USA and CIA scoreing an own goal, but that assumes that USA wants peace in the region. I don’t think that was ever the plan.

These brainwashed indoctrinated loons want armageddon, the Christian Zionists see the apocalyptic destruction of Israel, whatever, as part of the Divine Plan, as per Revelations and all that crap. And the Zionists have their own version, wanting to destabilise every country around them so that there is no chance of any organised opposition to their expansion. And then there are the Saudis… and the Iranians… and the Turks… and the Kurds… and the Russian fleet of war ships armed with hi tech and nuclear warheads…

It’s true that Egypt was – and remains – on the brink of total economic collapse; the bloodbath that is not a bloodbath only followed a change in the signature on the checks, from Qatar to Saudi Arabia (and the United Arab Emirates). As Spengler has demonstrated on this site (see Islam’s civil war moves to Egypt, Asia Times Online, July 8, 2013), Egypt will remain a banana republic without the bananas and dependent on foreigners to eat any. The economic disaster won’t go away – not to mention the MB’s cosmic resentment.

The winners, as it stands, are the House of Saud/Israel/ Pentagon axis. How did they pull it off?

UNITED NATIONS- The United States, which has refused to cut off its hefty 1.3 billion dollars in annual military aid to Egypt, continues to argue that depriving arms to the 438,500-strong security forces will only “destabilise” the crisis-ridden country.

There is perhaps a more significant – but undisclosed – reason for sustaining military aid flows to Egypt: protecting U.S. defence contractors.

Virtually all – or an overwhelming proportion – of the 1.3 billion dollars granted under Foreign Military Financing (FMF) is plowed back into the U.S. economy, specifically into the U.S. defence industry.

William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Centre for International Policy (CIP), told IPS U.S. President Barack Obama’s refusal to cut-off military aid to Egypt while U.S. weapons are being used to murder protesters is “unconscionable”.

“The reasons given for continuing this aid no longer hold up to scrutiny. It is not a source of stability, as the Obama administration claims,” he said.

And it has certainly not given the United States any leverage to moderate the behaviour of the regime, said Hartung, who has written extensively on the politics and economics of the U.S. defence industry.

“One thing the aid has done and continues to do is to enrich U.S. defence contractors like Lockheed and General Dynamics,” he added.

With the exception of a tank factory built with U.S. assistance, he pointed out, the vast bulk of the roughly 40 billion dollars in U.S. military aid to Egypt over the past 30 years has gone straight into the coffers of U.S. weapons makers.

General Fatteh al-Sisi was denounced by a member of his own family following the death of another relative in the massacre at Rabaa al Adawiya. Hazem Lutfi Abdel Aziz Abdel Rahman al-Sisi, appeared in the video below to denounce General Sisi following the death of his brother, Khalid Lutfi al-Sisi. Khalid, a 46 year old engineer, was killed during the army and security forces raid on the anti-coup sit-ins at Adawiya on Wednesday.
Hazem said that he disowned General Sisi as a member of his family and called him a traitor and a killer. He went on to say that he was sure that General Sisi would be punished for his actions, even if justice was a long time coming, as well as the Minister of Interior, Mohammed Ibrahim. He concluded by saying that he hoped God would give everyone patience and insisted that Egyptians would not be silent in the fight for their rights.

Those interested in a fairly detailed account of the history of the Muslim Brotherhood, including its secret collaboration with the British and the CIA, its violent campaign against President Nasser, its support from Saudi Arabia and its backing for Anwar Sadat’s efforts to crush the Egyptian left…..

We’ll still have an energy base. Human beings got a lot done using their own muscles as well as animals. Plus we can still use wind and water energy on a small scale (e.g. your old-timey riverside mill or the Vermont Sail Freight Project). And it was fine. That’s what we are transitioning to anyway, so why not go directly there, and not bother with all this renewables palaver?

A country six miles wide, with 80 million people dependent on a single water source, with 4 other nations upstream starting to build (chinese funded) dams across it is the stuff of political nightmares—but I look in vain for anything that collects these factors into a single problem. Everybody deals with it piecemeal.
Much of their food supply depends on diesel to pump water from the nile, but they can only get that as a freebie from Arab neighbours.

Er—kinda hate to mention this, but I think you forgot about population.
Also, I take it that in your desire to return to the bucolic bliss of the 18th century, you’ll be OK with the diseases that went with it?http://www.endofmore.com/?p=763
Though I agree we’re going to get there anyway, but not in the smooth ‘howdy neighbor’ manner that you might be imagining.

You’ve read into my post a lot of things that aren’t there and you’ve made several assumptions. E.g. I never said that we will return to 100% to the 18th century (actually I never mentioned any century). I never said anything about bucolic bliss or smoothness, or population. ALL of that is your own projection. If you want to snark and criticize your own projections, have at it.

Our industrial era kicked off with the first viable steam engine, 1776, without fossil fuel energy, we return to that pre-industrial revolution era at best, I hate to think what the worst might be, likely worse than 100% return to the 18th c.
oil has given us everything, without it we have nothing, because the successive oil using generations have forgotten how to survive without it.
we seem to be roughly in the same position as people on the Titanic, only this time the captain announces there’s books on boatbuilding in the ship’s library, and we are at liberty to tear up the decks to make them.
we cannot ignore excess numbers, we are the problem. Just like excess numbers were Captain Smith’s problem.

Earlier technology included axes and spears. People used them to exterminate the megafauna everywhere they migrated. They killed and ate them all without a thought towards what would be left for their children. In so doing they also wrecked the ecosystem in ways we are only just starting understand:

And that only refers to the recyling of nutrients. Megafauna also served to distribute seeds:

The tree (osage orange) has been described (in a terrific article about co-evolution) as anachronistic, because it evolved for its seeds to be disbursed by such beasts as the mastodons, mammoths, gomphotheres, and other megafauna which after a tranquil 20 million years or so, were driven to extinction by – who else? – humans, in the blink of a geologic eye 15,000 years ago. Several species of carnivore dependant on the giant herbivores for food, and plants that depended on them for spreading seeds, promptly followed suit. But along with some other species in the same predicament, such as pawpaw and persimmon, the osage orange clung to life through prodigious clonal reproduction from vigorous runners.

Can’t remember where, but I’ve come across the notion that the reason we switched to agriculture is that we had to, because we’d gotten too good at hunting & gathering and we’d h&g’d ourselves out of a food supply.

OTOH, not all h&g groups did so, since some were doing fine right up until the 20th century. They might have changed their environment a bit but they didn’t destroy it. It’d be interesting to know more about those groups. Did they have a mindset that enabled them to know when enough was enough, that didn’t drive them to always want more?

…there are a great many different types of hunter-gatherers, with a wide variety of often very different value systems and survival strategies. And, again, as with the Universal People, any attempt to identify cultural elements held in common by all or even most hunter-gatherer societies would require a research project of major proportions.

That’s not what I was getting at. It doesn’t matter whether there was ever a single common human culture or whatever. What matters is that there are examples of human societies that did not destroy their habitats, so we know that is one of the options. But we need to know more about those societies, so that we might cultivate that option for the future.

Nothing is written in stone, even with only minutes to spare on the doomsday clock. So I agree with you on looking to the past for examples on sustainble cultures. I wrote a post in reference to this here:

Eh ? Well, without getting into an argument with you about ‘the future’, there’s a whole effing book there about ‘soceities that did not destroy their habitats’, should you wish to begin educating yourself on the subject, as some others have already done before you. As the quote was intended to hint, they are not one but many, and of those that remain, they are not static but dynamic. Consider for example the Kogi. But what use is a soceity that does not destroy it’s habitat, when the whole planet is made uninhabitable ? THAT is the problem. Permaculture already incorporated ideas from many sustainable cultures, but permaculture is no use when the whole global climate is wrecked and destabilised and when nuclear radiation poisons your environment.

The Bushmen or !Kung San of the Kalahari Desert are one of the longest running cultures on earth…..maybe 50,000 years. They didn’t change so much through all that, and it seems they were gentle on the land. But over the last thirty years or so they have been under intense pressure from surrounding political regimes to change and modernize, and their resources, the little they have, are under assault from poverty stricken areas nearby, as well as global mineral extracting corporations. When you add global warming to the assaults on their lifestyle, I doubt they can hold onto their way of life any longer

Eating megafauna was consumption of energy.
We consumed one animal, but didn’t worry about the next one till we got hungry. Then went out and killed another one…there was always another one.
Our attitude to energy sources today hasn’t changed very much, there’s always been more oil to get hold of except now there isn’t, hence collective panic reflected in financial and political chaos.

The mistake most people make is to examine one or two aspects of our collective predicament in isolation, and to then propose ‘solutions’ which overlook other major factors, or ‘solutions’ which actually worsen some unconsidered aspects. Thus, we have those concerned with climate who are largely ignorant of energy considerations. Those who are concerned with energy who are ignorant of climate considerations, those who are concerned with ‘food security’ and population who are ignorant of energy and climate aspects etc.

EVERYTHING is deeply interconnected.

To grasp the whole picture, which I likened to putting the pieces of a gigantic jigsaw puzzle together in ‘The Easy Way’, one needs to have a reasonably good understanding of:

At one stage I suggested that Thomas Savery was to blame for our present predicament, because he built a steam pump in, or around, 1698, which led to the development of mine pumps that permitted greater access to coal in [potentially] flooded mines. However, he could not have built his pump if the techniques necessary to produce smooth bores had not already been developed by cannon manufacturers. And cannon manufacturers reached their level of technology on the back of the previous 7,000 years of development of metallurgy.

At one stage I postulated that the moment a proto-human learned to tie a knot humanity’s trajectory was determined, because tying rocks to sticks opened pathways to high-energy foods that led to biological (reproductive) advantage.

We do know that reproductive advantage tended to go hand in hand with greater control of the local environment until fairly recently. Thus, the concept of ‘progress’ is firmly locked into the collective psyche. In practice ‘progress’ is simply change. And since the Industrial Revolution most ‘progress’ has generated significant unintended consequences which have increased with the passing of time.

The Luddites opposed the mechanisation and dehumanisation of manufacturing in the early years of the nineteenth century, whereby people lost traditional sources of income and became slaves to machines. However, the industrial meme successfully subverted their standpoint, and the word Luddite came to mean ‘someone who irrationally opposes progress’. Yet, in retrospect, the Luddites were right.

In England, the period 1780 to 1880 corresponded with the completion of enclosure of most of the common lands by greedy landowners, further capturing and enslaving the bulk of the populace. Of course, it was the Normans who started that process.

Whilst money-lenders have had a big say in what happened for many centuries, it was in the US after the Civil War that money-lenders and corporations began to dominate society.

The combination of huge profits made by extracting oil at high EROI and refining it, together with the huge profits made by extracting iron ore and coal and converting them into stuff put us on the path to the utter catastrophe we have almost reached.

The devastation of most ‘advanced’ nations in the Second World War left the US in a very dominant position which allowed it to export its dysfunctional economic model to much of the world.

Persuading people that acquiring more stuff was a path to happiness was the final straw, especially since they were so easily persuaded.

Now that the myth of progress is so firmly established in the minds of the vast majority of people, there seems to be no way to demolish it.

However, when we look at the state of ordinary people living in industrial societies, they have never been sicker, never been more dependent on unsustainable inputs of energy and food, and have never been as incapable of living as they are now.

I can always enjoy a little humor regardless of what I think the future is bringing.
The last time I moved I sold 75% of my stuff. I hope the new owners are enjoying their new stuff.
A little rough language in the video.

”…A feeling of despair has taken hold within research communities like Dutta’s, Top officials at academic and medical institutions have grown convinced that years of stagnant budgets and recent cuts have ushered in the dark ages of science in America…

…the private sector won’t fund the work. “There is no money to be made from chloroquine,” Jackson said. “Only if the drug companies found something they could copyright or patent would they do it….

…It’s not just projects receiving NIH grants that have been set back by sequestration. Various other government agencies have seen their research budgets slashed as well. Early estimates from the American Association for the Advancement of Science projected that $9.3 billion would be cut from research and development projects in 2013 alone, including $6.4 billion from the Department of Defense…

…The non-technical term for this is “brain drain.” It had been happening for years prior to sequestration, though the recent cuts have accelerated it. Antonsen, a plasma physicist who studies the production and interaction of electromagnetic fields with matter, said he has lost two staffers so far: one has left the country and another accepted a job at a Wall Street bank. A third is currently looking for work outside the field.

Boston University’s Gursky said that her program in Physiology and Biophysics had had no incoming graduate students during the last two academic years, while the overall number of matriculating PhD students at other programs had “dropped sharply.” Dutta said a prospective hire in India had recently turned down a job offer in favor of going to Germany.

But there’s a better reason than empathy to care about mass dolphin-death: It may be telling us some scary things about the state of our seas.

“Dolphins are at the front lines of ocean health,” says Matt Huelsenbeck, a marine scientist at the non-profit Oceana. Dolphins are “the top predators—everything trickles [through them] … They’re more important than a lot of research buoys in terms of what’s going on.”…

…Even if it does turn out to be an epidemic, though, climate change and pollution likely play a role. Among similar species, diseases have been shown to spread more rapidly in higher water temperature. Plus, toxins like mercury weaken dolphins, making them more susceptible to pathogens by suppressing their immune systems.

But there are signs that the recent dolphin die-off is caused directly by pollution, not disease. Charles Potter, a marine mammal expert with the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, points to an unusually high number of males and calves that are turning up dead.

When the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere rises, the Earth not only heats up, but extreme weather events, such as lengthy droughts, heat waves, heavy rain and violent storms, may become more frequent. Whether these extreme climate events result in the release of more CO2 from terrestrial ecosystems and thus reinforce climate change has been one of the major unanswered questions in climate research. It has now been addressed by an international team of researchers working with Markus Reichstein, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena. They have discovered that terrestrial ecosystems absorb approximately 11 billion tons less carbon dioxide every year as the result of the extreme climate events than they could if the events did not occur. That is equivalent to approximately a third of global CO2 emissions per year.

Published on Thursday, August 15, 2013
Are You Ready to Embrace the Apocalypse?
Facing up to the slow collapse of our planet is hard, but thinking apocalyptically could help us prepare for the crises to come

The biggest problem for anyone thinking about the medium-term future there is that the population of Hampshire is now about twice what it was in 1950 (largely due to migration there), and approximates to the total population of England in the fourteenth century!

The population of where I live, 150 years ago, was three times what it is now. Why did all those people leave ? Because economic conditions made life so hard it was wretched. They didn’t want to leave their native land and homes, but they didn’t want to starve and die either, they wanted a house and land where they could have children and a life and a future.
Where did all those people go ? Well, ask the Native Americans and S. Africans and Australians and S. Americans, whose land they took.
All the ports of Wales had sailing ships that went to Cape Town and San Francisco and New Orleans and the newspapers had advertisments offering tickets to a wonderful new life…

…the concept of terra nullius, employed to justify the expulsion of indigenous populations in the settler-colonial societies of the Anglosphere, or their “extermination,” as the founding fathers of the American Republic described what they were doing, sometimes with remorse, after the fact. According to this useful doctrine, the Indians had no property rights since they were just wanderers in an untamed wilderness. And the hard-working colonists could create value where there was none by turning that same wilderness to commercial use.

And right now in coastal North Carolina we are experiencing a cool wave when this should be the hottest time of year. It is all about the jet stream, wandering down into areas it never reached decades ago.

We live in some kind of fantasyland here. Our local newspaper mocks the idea of global warming. Our state legislature outlaws sea level rise. NC might just have moved to the very top internationally as the area most in denial. And here I sit alone, with only Mike and his friends to relate to. Don’t know what I’d do without you guys!

I wonder if they have taken into account methane’s potential impact? Anyhow, it seems at first glance that the tropics will be even more unbearable, perhaps unlivable, and that maintaining an electrical grid under such circumstances is unlikely. Any freshwater cooling of power plants would become impossible and AC demand would likely create blackouts. By 2100, with a cancerous exploitation of remaining fossil fuels, the prevalence of 5 sigma events would approach 60% of the entire globe. These events can kill entire swaths of extant ecosystems and devastate human crops, not to mention other serious impacts as the giant ice cube at the top of the earth stops sucking up heat in its phase change.

Perhaps Elon Musk’s next great invention will be massive air conditioned greenhouses – we can do it, yes we can, just takes a little human ingenuity (pulls slide rule from pocket). I guess Meadows was right.

Meadows: Forget the details. The basic formula for CO2 pollution consists of four elements. First, the number of people on Earth. Multiplied by the capital per person, so how many cars, houses and cows per man, to come to Earth’s standard of living. This in turn multiplied by a factor of energy use per unit of capital, ie, how much energy it takes to produce cars, build houses and to supply or to feed cows. And finally multiply that by the amount of energy derived from fossil sources.

SIZE: Approximately 80 to 90 percent.

Meadows: Approximately. If you want the CO2 burden to decline, the overall result of this multiplication must decline. But what do we do? We try to reduce the share of fossil energy as we use more alternative sources like wind and solar. Then we work to make our energy use more efficient, insulate homes, optimise engines and all that. We work only on the technical aspects, but we neglect the population factor completely and believe that our standard of living is getting better, or at least stays the same. We ignore population and the social elements in the equation, and focus totally on just trying to solve the problem from the technical side. So we will fail, because growth of population and living standards are much greater than we would save through efficiency and alternative energy. Therefore, the CO2 emissions will continue to rise. There is no solution to the climate change problem as long as we do not address the social factors that count.

FORMAT: You mean the Earth will take things into its own hands?

Meadows: Disasters are the way to solve all the problems of the planet. Due to climate change, sea levels will rise because the ice caps are melting. Harmful species will spread to areas where they do not meet enough natural enemies. The increase in temperature leads to massive winds and storms, which in turn affects precipitation. So, more floods, more droughts…

FORMAT: All the world currently sees salvation in a sustainable green technology.

Meadows: This is a fantasy. Even if we manage to increase the efficiency of energy use dramatically, use of renewable energies much more, and painful sacrifices to limit our consumption, we have virtually no chance to prolong the life of the current system. Oil production will be reduced approximately by half in the next 20 years, even with the exploitation of oil sands or shale oil. It just happens too fast…The World Bank director (most recently responsible for the global airline industry) has explained to me, the problem of peak oil is not discussed in his institution, it is simply taboo. Whoever will try to anyway, is fired or transferred. After all, Peak Oil destroys the belief in growth. You would have to change everything…

Note: whomever can tell him in private to pay a bit of serious attention to this comment of mine, please tell him to do so; i date to think he’d be interested.

Mike, this piece of yours reminded me about one rather important subject. I recalled there is a documentary about it, and then noticed your blog does not have it among “videos” on the left; i dare to think you might want to add this one to the list after this comment in its entirety. The documentary itself is, but please read the rest of my comment here 1st.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf0khstYDLA .

The issue of so-called “chemtrails” is rather dirty. Lots of nonsense exist around the subject – lots of things which are obviously repulsive towards any reasonably thinking person. In this sea of silly things, though, i have found some quite seemingly sane and worth one’s attention pieces:
– the text of 1991’s US patent #5,003,186, which i definitely recommend to read in its entirety for anyone who’s not done so yet. It’s available at http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5003186.PN.&OS=PN/5003186&RS=PN/5003186 ;
– the fact that 10+ years since said patent was filed – during September 2001, – grounded for ~3 days fleet of US jets resulted in more than 1 degree C increase of daily temperature ranges over continental US (as explained in a few minutes piece in here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=p8RyNSzQDaU&t=1931 );
– air-trafic controllers did make repeated reports about unusual properties of jet exhaust, including interference with their radars (see, for example, http://rense.com/general20/cc.htm );
– some other bits and pieces of seemingly accurate information, including many (not all, though) of statements made in the documentary above;
– places which are far from most/all regular civil and military flgihts are warming, during last dozen years, very fast:

This all i knew before. Today, though, i happened to hear the following said by none other than famous

George Soros (quote): “You can take climate change, which is really happening, but our ability to confront it is non-existant”

So you see, i had to explain all above about… no, not about “chemtrails”, – but about very particular type of chemtrail, namely aluminium oxide seeding, designed to slow/halt increase of land surface temeratures (at least for NATO countries, that is) before i would able to ask one interesting question:

does George Soros truly believe what he said (quote just above), or not?

Oh, and one more comment about techno-fixes. You see, i do not think that all proponents of techno-fixes are truly believing that solutions they propose – are capable of solving the problem; actually, many of them – at very least, ones who are competent enough to actually engineer such “solutions”, – are very well aware that things they are designing and implementing – are just temporary fixes. This is where your article, Mike, is substantially wrong, if it assumes (it does, doesn’t it?) that those who try to patch things up with techno-fixes – truly believe it’d work. Fact is, many of them do not: many of them know it wouldn’t help long-term. They still do it, despite deleterious side-effects for both now and for long-term future. Why they do it, then, you ask? Why, simply because short-term benefits are desired enough, in compare to short-term damaging side-effects, for _elites_ – i.e. states and/or corporations who fund their work. And, in a way, it’s even fair; in my country, there is a saying: “one who pays – get to decide what music will play”. So, i wouldn’t try to blame those who propose and work on techno-fixes; those folks are not the will, not the deciding party. Remove them – others will come into their place. Instead of blaming “geoengineers” themselves, who just do their job, we’d better point the finger to the powers that be – leading states and corporations. It’s those entities who paid for and authorized spraying of aluminium oxide (and possibly some other trace elements by the looks of it). It’s those who benefit. It’s those who profit the most as a result of the whole thing. – for now, that is.

And in the same time, we can’t fight them. Suicidal. They are truly the ultimate power; try to force them to do anything they seriously wouldn’t like, and they’ll respond with crushing force – combined might of some combination of corrupting (bribes, threats), physical extermination, lies and public opinion manipulation, falcified charges and bribed courts giving ya long time in jail, and so on. So instead, we are to find ways to cooperate with them and/or hide from them. It’s the only practically possible way.

Obvious as it should be, it is confirmed in above linked documentary by David Keith. here’s the link to the bit he’s saying, absolutely mercilessly, about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=jf0khstYDLA&t=506 . It doesn’t surprise me. I’ve heard before about this man, few years ago, also in relation to geoengineering; don’t remember details, but it was said that he was (possibly, still is) a disciple of one much older and absolutely merciless US scientist who did many ethically ugly “favors” for US state, being well known as one of coldest and heartless scientists to walk the Earth.

P.S. As often is, i didn’t check for typos. There are some, probably. Sorry. >< Just a comment i do, after all. Please, forgive me this weakness…

Oh, and i forgot to give links about some remote places being warmed up recently much more than one would expect from Earth average temperature dynamic during last ~10 years. Well, http://www.clim-past.net/7/975/2011/cp-7-975-2011.html
– reports very steady +0.021C annual average temperature increase at Mauna Loa – which is very remote place. Note that it means +0.2C per decade – much faster than global average for last decade; especially important because Mauna Loa is the tropical place (19 degrees latitude), and at such a tropical location it is expected that increase of temperatures should be much lower than global average – instead it’s much higher;

It is far better to keep the masses distracted and amused with internationalised sport and celebrity gossip than allow genuine discussion of anything life-threatening. Indeed, it is necessary for the short term survival of ‘the system’ that none of the factors that will bring down the system are subject to public debate.
I

Actually, it may well be better – without any sarcasm, seriously, – to keep masses distracted, Kevin. Think, what is likely to happen if masses would somehow grasp and realize the full extent of the danger?

1. Masses themselves will not be able to make any sound plan of actions. Reasons: well-established dumbification of masses within GIC system; lack of trust to each other (seemingly amplificated by modern media and “culture”); objective complexity of the task of solving rather complex problem: even among scientists very few are aware about all major tendencies and facts needed to solve this problem. Few, if any at all.

2. Unable to make any sensible plan of action, masses then will demand that institutions which are “officially” supposed to solve such problem – would bring in sound solution. Things like UN, best think tanks, univercities, whatever.

3. Said institutions, however, can bring no solution which would allow for long-term contunuous existance of masses (7 or so billions of people); we here know that such a solution does not exist. Thus, assuming that said institutions wouldn’t start a new round of deceit and lies (we assume this since our initial axiom is that masses ARE aware, somehow, about what’s going on in the 1st place; ergo, we assume masses somehow are able to stop being tricked about this, too), – the only possible reaction from said institutions will be either actual global genocide of few billions people, or silence. I do not think you fancy the former. So it’ll have to be silence.

4. Masses, seeing that “Experts” and “rulers” and “Scientists” are not providing any plan of action, and unable to figure out such a plan on their own, will then do three things: 1st, revolt (this what lesser part of masses will do), 2nd, “every man/family for themselves” survival (also lesser part), and 3rd, just keep living as we did before, except now quite many would keep having nightmares, depression and despair.

That’s what masses would do, if not kept in the dark.

Now let’s see if anything good comes from any of those 3 groups.
– 1st group – revolting masses. Look at Egypt, man. Many, if not most, of people who took part in revolution there (~2 years ago) – were quite middle-class. They were computer literates, quite intelligent (at least in compare to peasants, you know), relatively young on average people. Most of them had noble intentions. What was the result? Current events in Egypt are not looking good. The country is much closer to full-scale civil war now; hundreds are killed, thousands are wounded during last week there. The initial stated goal of revolution – just government, democracy, etc, – was not achieved. What was achived is eventually putting the country on a brink of civil war. This was not the intent of those who revolted; but nonetheless, it is the result. How much worse revolting masses would end up doing if revolt is against knowingly non-solvable danger (which is, unnatural death of majority of presently alive humans)? So, not good;
– 2nd group – individual / small group survival. Most folks would fail at it despite trying all they can: if GIC is still breathing, then such people are heavily used by GIC itself, tricked to buy tons of things for artificially high prices; if GIC is dead, then carrying capacity is reduced tremendously, which means armed conflicts of everyone vs everyone, and very few survive. The massively negative effect of large mass of people knowing about coming collapse in advance, though, is that what remaining little carrying capacity would be exploited by this group mercilessly, thus causing yet further degradation of environments etc, potentially ending in complete human extinction. So, not good either;
– 3rd group – the only practical difference of them knowing the real deal – would be emotional suffering. Nothing else. So, not good, too.

Now i don’t pretend to be almighty and all-knowing; may be i’m wrong. But to the best of my ability, i can’t see how or why masses actually _should not_ be distracted and amused. If the only thing which is likely to be achieved by “opening eyes” of masses – is more pain and suffering, – then why do it? If they are already doomed, – “masses” are indeed to die as soon as global industrial civilization would go belly up, – then perhaps the last good thing which can be available for them, – is indeed happy ignorance. Out of mercy, you know?

Within masses, there are always very few individuals, though, who are curious and intelligent and honest enough to stay restless and “dig” for truth. In no way i mean to force such individuals into ignorance. But it’s not required to “trumpet the truth” at every corner and to all masses for those few who do much to find the truth; those few will quite soon will find out the truth if there are simply some few places in the net at which they could learn – and confirm with their own logic and prior knowledge – all the main facts you’d want them to know.

I guess this place is one of such places. I guess even the system itself wants such places to exist. I guess that’s why i write this in here comment, – and not trying to talk about this to some large newspaper or TV channel, etc.

Besides, it’s playing with fire, too. Tell masses too much, and it upsets powers that be. Upset them enough, and they start to see you as a threat – which means they start to “deal” with you. Look at that Snowden guy. Forced to flee his homeland, stripped of his citizenship (his passport was nulified), accused as a traitor, and who knows what else. I am not sure he’ll even live long enough to see 2014… You know, “accidents happen… all the time”. I’d expect that any organization or individual who’d seriously try to break the “dream” of masses in some way which would have any significant chance for success – would face much more urgent, severe and strong retaliation from the powers that be than Snowden had. Exactly because of masively nehative (to powers that be) effects from activities of group #1 and group #2. So you see… Even if someone or some institution would seriously try to “wake up” the masses, – most likely attempt would fail, while entity who made the attempt, – would likely suffer much or simply be destroyed, literally, by the powers that be.

It is quite a saving grace of this and similar forums to maintain somewhat low-profile policy, imho. Hopefully powers that be understand enough to see it as some possible part of their own “insurance” and “preparation” for real bad times, and as long as we here don’t do too much noise, – we might well be welcome to keep researching the subject.

Seems to me the biggest danger, particularly in the USA is a theocratic dictatorship
This is likely to happen because
1…Everything else has failed, so lets put Jesus in office…there were some wacky candidates last time
2, You have a military infested with godbothering lunatics, only too willing in inflict their craziness on the rest of us sinners..
3 If there’s a sudden meltdown, extreme crisis, or whatever, you might have a military takeover combining 1 and 2. then you are faced with exactly the same situation as is happening right now across the middle east

There is much of good intention in your words, Kevin. I admire it. But not enough practicality, though.

1. Yes, everyday, more people show up – most of them will die miserably. However, not your fault, not mine. And we can’t help it any significantly.

2. If we do nothing, then yes, every day passed decreases chances to get through. However, lots and lots can – and must – be done while in the same time NOT opposing powers that be, or even cooperating with them (mutually beneficial).

3. Disputable. I know what you mean. However, consider also this: comsumption is a major force which drives economies. Cut down excess consumption, and up to billions working places will be lost; up to billions people will lose their job. Also, massive changes in nearly all transport links, industries, infrastructure. What works for, say, 1000Mt goods exchange – often does not work for 10Mt goods exchange. In so-called “developed” countries, even large number of professions will stop being needed by society – specialists in those will not just lose the job, but also qualification to get anything but lowest-grade job. And their kids are as innocent as anyone else’s.

As for ability to reason and behave sensibly, man, there is alot of it among people who are leading powers that be. They couldn’t hold the power if they’d be easy. It’s just massive mias and distortion of much of information the system “feeds” to its own drivers, plus corruption of having power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. But don’t think they’re stupid. They are not. In fact, best of them are much more smart than you and I.

Number 3 is what Joe Bageant was referring to when he said many professions are of dubious worth and some seem to have no purpose at all but to destroy the planet.

…there is no disputing that we do reduce all things to consumption. Or acquiring money for consumption. Or paying on the debt for past consumption. It keeps things simple, and stamps them as authentically American.

For example, now faced with what may be the biggest ecological disaster in human history, I’m hearing average Americans up here talk of the Gulf oil “spill” (when they speak of it at all — TV gives the illusion those outside the Gulf region give a shit), in terms of its effect on: (A) the price of seafood; and (B) jobs in tourism and fishing. Only trolls stunted by generations of inbred American style capitalism could do such a thing: reduce a massive ocean dead zone to the cost of a shrimp cocktail or a car payment.
~ Joe Bageant

My experience in talking with visible and accessible ‘community leaders’, i.e. members of parliament, mayors, councillors etc. is that they are generally poorly educated and are usually lacking in knowledge. The previous mayor of the district I live in was (is) a hotelier who married into money. The current mayor was a woodwork teacher before entering politics. He acquired the nickname Harry Do-nothing after many years in parliament during which he did next to nothing, other than sabotage the future of the district, the nation and the planet via deals with global corporations.

The unseen PTB, the heirs to vast fortunes acquired decades or centuries ago, are apparently stupid in that they seem to believe they can survive (and prosper?) on a planet that is being ‘murdered’.

Social engineers maintain confidence amongst the credulous by promoting technological miracles. The projects will never happen, but it doesn’t matter, it’s all about calming fears and maintaining a state of mind that “believes” in the omnipotence of technology and related institutions. Religions are the same, deliverance into heaven will never happen, but it doesn’t matter, it’s all about calming fears and maintaining a state of mind that “believes” in the omnipotence of prayer and the church.

Unfortunately humans have the dubious distinction of becoming the first species, because of several co-evolved features, to have evolved rapidly onto a cancerous path. Their damaging expansion and metastatic growth will preclude the emergence of a life cycle or any kind of repeatability. It is barreling towards its own extinction without any greater concern than finding more energy to burn in the deliverance of primitive neural satisfactions.

Some of the population have been referred to as “useless eaters”, but the technicians that promote the technology that enables the proliferation of useless eaters are themselves only the architects of a complex cancer that is eating the planet. Get rid of the useless eaters and we still have a big problem – the useful eaters.

People’s faith in technology has become so great that they give it magical powers, overcoming both depleting oil reserves and a finite planet. A perfect example can be found below. An intelligent reader tries to educate the person, but to no avail:

“Blimey you’re a depressed lot here at the Gaurdian. All that needs is a new technological revolution and the world economy will boom again. I admit that growth in markets is finite, given that in the end the number of growth markets (emerging economies) dry-up.

As for reserve estimates these are revised all the time and typically go upwards. Most of the so-called abandoned fields will be redeveloped once new technologies become available. And new, once inaccessible or uneconomic fields, will come on tap. One promising development is remote-submerged wells this will allow us to develop the untapped reserves in the Arctic. In short there is no energy crisis as long as we are ready to exploit these reserves.” – link

This article gives a great rundown of the reality of fracking, and how it is showing disappointing results, proving once again the peak oil people of the alternative media were right and the mainstream economists of the WSJ and Forbes and the Economist were wrong. It was and is just another bubble.

Rising costs across the industry, and declining profitability for the supermajors in an era of triple-digit global prices, suggest that oil prices need to be higher to maintain output. Since domestic gasoline and diesel prices, which are strongly linked to global prices, have remained stubbornly high even while U.S. oil prices were falling this year, that suggests we will likely see gasoline prices pushing toward $4.50 a gallon next year in higher-priced U.S. markets like San Francisco and New York City.

And:

The shale revolution is “a little bit overhyped,” Shell CEO Peter Voser said last week as his company announced a $2.1 billion write-down, mostly owing to the poor performance of its fracking adventures in U.S. “liquids-rich shales.” Which of its shale properties have underperformed, Shell didn’t say, but CFO Simon Henry admitted that “the production curve is less positive than we originally expected.”

What is happening in Egypt is a precursor to a wider global war between the world’s elites and the world’s poor, a war caused by diminishing resources, chronic unemployment and underemployment, overpopulation, declining crop yields caused by climate change, and rising food prices. Thirty-three percent of Egypt’s 80 million people are 14 or younger, and millions live under or just above the poverty line, which the World Bank sets at a daily income of $2 in that nation. The poor in Egypt spend more than half their income on food—often food that has little nutritional value. An estimated 13.7 million Egyptians, or 17 percent of the population, suffered from food insecurity in 2011, compared with 14 percent in 2009, according to a report by the U.N. World Food Program and the Egyptian Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS). Malnutrition is endemic among poor children, with 31 percent under 5 years old stunted in growth. Illiteracy runs at more than 70 percent.

Northeast Asia is on fire. Yesterday temperatures in Shanghai hit an all-time high of 105.4ºF (40.8ºC), the hottest day in the coastal megacity since Chinese officials began keeping records some 140 years ago — during the Qing dynasty. On Aug. 12 the heat reached 105.8ºF (41ºC) in the southern Japanese city of Shimanto, the hottest temperature ever recorded in the country. Hundreds of people throughout South Korea have been hospitalized because of heatstroke, even as the government was forced to cut off air-conditioning in public buildings because of fears of a power shortage. As heat waves go, it’s a tsunami, similar to the brutally hot weather that singed Europe 10 years ago, which contributed to the deaths of over 30,000 people.

It’s also a glimpse of a blazingly hot future. We know that temperatures will generally rise as the globe warms thanks to increased greenhouse-gas emissions. (It’s right there in the name: global warming.) But as a new study published in Environmental Research Letters shows, the sort of scorching heat waves currently baking Northeast Asia are likely to become more frequent and more severe in the decades to come — and that’s going to happen no matter what we do about carbon emissions in the near future. There are some very uncomfortable summers on the horizon.

‘The city of Shimanto, Kochi Prefecture, which on Monday became Japan’s hottest city with a record-setting temperature of 41.0 degrees, is now rushing to capitalize on its new title with a string of unique projects.

The mercury hit the all-time high of 41.0 in the city’s Egawasaki district.

Hailing the news as a potential boost to the local economy, the chamber of commerce and industry wasted no time in setting up signboards across the city proclaiming “Egawasaki, the hottest area in Japan.”

An official in the chamber who didn’t want his name released for privacy reasons said the signs are designed to guide tourists to the heart of the sweltering heat.’

“A soft landing for America 40 years from now? Don’t bet on it. The demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more quickly than anyone imagines. If Washington is dreaming of 2040 or 2050 as the end of the American Century, a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends suggests that in 2025, just 15 years from now, it could all be over except for the shouting.”

Mike, you said: “People’s faith in technology has become so great that they give it magical powers, overcoming both depleting oil reserves and a finite planet.”. This reminds me about one more significant (to say the least) observation of mine, which i formulated for myself not too long ago:

there most likely is the “peak technology” for any technological civilization, and modern GIC seems to be near it, or perhaps even past it already.

Two sets of facts, considered together, have led me to formulate this observation.

First set is about limits to complexity; things like
– there are only so many chemical elements, and for a couple decades already all practically useable chemical elements are known, described, researched. And we know there will be no new ones (not counting possible few, purely academic, new trans-uranium “monsters” which only exist for a trillionth of a second);
– there is a limit to human comprehension of complexity, and it didn’t increase any much for the last 100+ years. For example, Einstein’s understanding of physics was outstanding in his time, – and still is by today’s standards, too. Nowadays, it’s a known fact that volume of scientific literature in any science is tremendously larger than volume of information which any human, however genius, could hope to learn during one’s life. It is a “norm” nowadays that scientists are very specialized in narrow fields, for this reason, and it’s well known this reduces the quality of new research much. This could change if we’d have true AI to help, however, true AI will not be possible for at least 40, more likely ~70 years – and considering collapse of GIC, it in fact never will be. Thus, limitations which are in place because of how human brain works – is the finite complexity which prevents endless growth of knowledge and, thus, technology;
– limits to practical complexity of technologies. For economical, maintenance, ease-of-use and safety reasons, complexity of practically used technology can’t exceed certain limit, and the wider is the application of a technology, the lower is such a limit. Such as, cars on our streets are not “state of the art” as much as bolides of Formula 1 are. Our passenger jets are much less complex than the best we can do for “special” occasions (Concord, Tu-160). Vast majority of photo-cameras sold – are very primitive and poor in compare to the best ones used by the most capable professional photographers. Etc. Limits of this kind are related to finite complexity and power of human brain and/or senses – and this is genetic limitation in nature, and is not going to change any time soon (takes thousands years for even modest improvements of species’ genes);
– existing and well known limits to infinite increase of certain technologies’ complexity, which are set by certain laws of physics and processes. Examples include diffusion process, preventing creation of infinitely small devices for many matherials – and similarly, the size of elementary particles itself is also a limit of this kind; uncertainty principles in quantum mechanics; certain properties of elementary particles, such as massive penetrating and irradiating potential of high-energy neutrons – which is the primary obstacle on the way to practically working, industrial-scale, higher-than-zero-net-energy-generation fusion reactors.

This 1st set of facts makes it clear that there is quite a “ceiling” of obtainable complexity for each particular science and field of technology. This ceiling is sometimes rises tremendously when some new key factors appear, – such as qualitatively new methods of research and development, like “brute force” iteration solutions of never-before-doable mathematical tasks, which computers made possible to do; or new class of matherials which allow for big leaps in some technologies, – like composites, like meta-matherials recently. However, rather quickly, practically important applications are created rather quick, and then stagnation occurs again, still under the “ceiling” of complexity, even if higher one. Quite clear to me, this increase of ceilings of complexity cannot go on forever, though, since the high such ceilings go, the more difficult it gets to practically use whatever “new” became possible. Good example is supersonic flight. Once theory for it and required tests were done, both super=powers of the time – USA and USSR, – have built supersonic passenger planes: Concord and Tu-144, respectively. And for a number of years, those planes were in service. However, high complexity, cost, and risks of supersonic flight have led to disappearance of super-sonic passenger jets, after initial hype and enthusiasm about them faded out. However, both countries still use similarly large supersonic planes (strategic bombers) for military purposes – and of course, all kinds of smaller fighter-like planes as well. See, the technology itself didn’t die, it wasn’t for any reason made “impossible” to use – but it’s so difficult to use it in practice that only top-importance task of national security provides good enough reason to continue to use it. So for civil air travel, “peak technology” in terms of speed of air travel is already passed. Nowadays, there are prototypes of hyper-sonic vehicles, though – developed only for military applications this time. This is even more complex technology than just super-sonic – and it’s not at all clear whether militaries will ever have it for practical use. Even if they would, it’s possible it only will be used for a brief time – like super-sonic in civil air travel, – before being abandoned. So for military (at least, manned) air travel, the peak technology in terms of speed is quite likely “nowadays”.

The 1st set of facts slows and halts development of technologies, and sometimes rolls back ’em technologies a bit.

The 2nd set of facts, though, is what makes technologies go down, big-time. Among such facts are those:
– depletion of required resources, which are often present in finite amount. Many metals in industrial use today would not be in use if GIC would manage to function for 50 more years in “business as usual” pace. Some of most potent fertilizers are getting out of use already. Irrigation systems in desert regions, which sparked unprecedentally complex and productive (for such areas) agriculture complexes – are being exhausted, and in some places are already gone (and the fields in such places, once lush green, are indeed abandoned); fertility of soils, which in many places is dropping off a cliff; and of course, drying up supply of oil and natural gas – which are and still will be for 20+ years the main energy source, powering majority of existing technologies;
– corruption and misuse, which capital often does to technologies in pursuit of highest possible short-term profit. Excellent example is a light bulb: upon invention (was it Edison, actually?), a light bulb had mean time before failure ~1500 hours. Some years later, design was improved, and it went to work ~2500 hours before failure. But then, iirc in early 1930s, cartel was formed among all major light bulbs’ makers in US, and it was decided that 1000 hours is what it’ll be from then on. And they did it. Small produces who refused to comply were pushed out of the market or forced to comply. Another excellent example is about simple metallic tools – nowadays, so many of them are made so poorly and out of so “soft” steel that one often needs to buy a _couple_ at once if he intends to use those tools regularly and for any prolonged time. Woodcutting axes, shovels, screwdrivers, saws, knives, you name it… It came to a point where old tools, made some 30+ years ago, are very much sought after in some countries/regions. High-tech example? Easy: instead of increasingly automated and advanced textile industries, which are capable of making absolutely wonderful pieces of clothing, much of cloth making was simply “given” to “cheap human labor force” to do. Lower tech, worse-quality products, much-slave-like jobs for millions of poor folks (mainly in Asia) – but, well, it’s cheap like dirt, the profits are big, and there is no headache about making expensive automated factories, investing alot and waiting for return. Similar thing happens with many other goods, from child toys to electronics;
– wars. This is entirely obvious, eh – and it seems we look at more and more conflicts around the world as GIC comes closer and closer to its end;
– and the fact that level of technologies and sciences is very dependant on having sufficiently large human population / soceity. When it’s billions of humans on Earth, space flight and things like building LHC and thousand-scientists-strong collaborations working with it – are possible; but once GIC dies down, i doubt it’d be possible anymore. Same for space flight, jet travel, computers (making new ones, that is), modern firearms (making new ones, at least), modern pharmacology, modern large-scale mechanized agriculture, etc etc.

Whether human species would manage, eventually, not to drop back to “fire and sticks” level of technologies, but to remain some place quite high (say, 19th-century technologies or comparable), – i do not know. I hope humans would, though; technologies by themselves are not “evil” nor “failures”. I don’t remember who said it, but i agree much with this view: technologies are extensions of our weak bodies and limited minds, and what we do with them may be as good or as bad as we can do with our own body. It’s possible to kill and to nurture by one’s own hands; technologies just allow wider reach and bigger impact. The key thing, though, is that human species are definitely facing a possibility of complete extinction now, as many of us here know – and, the wider reach humans would still have at the “bottleneck” of human population, the bigger things they’d be able to do, – the higher are chances humans would manage to survive through. To this end, i find most, if not all, of possibly maintainable (locally) technologies to be worth maintaining.

What needs to be changed is, imho, social structure, culture, behaviour of humans who would make it through. It needs to be changed from something quite natural – capitalism, at least one of roots of which is based on natural “this is mine! I own it!” of prehistoric men, – to something very unnatural: for individuals and also for whole society to value and prioritize not their personal well-being, but well-being of Gaia as a whole, then (at lower priority) well-being of regional environments, and only then (even lower priority) – family and personal well-being.

Being unnatural, perhaps such a change is simply impossible to be implemented and work reliably. I don’t know if it is. But nonetheless it’s needed, because if such a change is not done, then sooner or later humans will _definitely_ extinct, every last of ’em.

By the way, it has excellent parallel. See, James Lovelock – and now many others, – rightfully say that biosphere of Earth functions much like one being. Another fact, compeltely non-disputable now, is that human body is in fact huge system of in many ways self-maintaining cells. Now, imagine there is a threat to one of cells in your body. Would the cell put everything else aside and concentrate its efforts for its own survival – “no matter the cost” for all the other cells in your body? Usually, it wouldn’t. Sometimes, though, wrong things happen, – and some cell starts to behave just like that. “Egoistic”. Majority of such occasions have a common name: cancer. Which usually kills (without massive agressive treatments, at least) both such cells and whole human body too, and rather fast. That’s how above, “unnatural” way – learning to throw away our hunter-gatherer’s nature of “mine! mine!” – is logically the only way to avoid complete extinction. And since it seem to be the only practically possible way too, i say humans are to try and go for it – no matter how low/non-existant chances may seem. Even if it wouldn’t work, – at least one would live a meaningful life, and would die knowing he did the only right thing there was to do. Which is not bad by itself, i say. 🙂

Cheers.

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OWS knows who really pulls the strings

"...the megawealthy and Washington have become so symbiotic as to be a single entity. Indeed, Occupy's best move, as conservative blogger/financier Gregory Djerejian noted at TheAtlantic.com, was "directing their ire squarely toward the real elites of the country, rather than their bought-and-paid marionettes sitting in Washington."

Preserving the Status Quo

There is no right wing or left wing, only the aristocracy and the serfs (a vertical paradigm).
To know this is to be like a fish who has broken the surface of the water, realizing he was in water the whole time.

A Kabuki Play

"What we have, in what passes for US democracy in 2012, is a kabuki play that Cicero put to papyrus 1948 years earlier. All historical empires and war aggressors have used propaganda to claim their looting and police states were necessary and helpful to the 99%. Instead, a sorrowful history tells us they were almost always for the sole benefit of the 1%."
- Albert Bates

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Stomach Of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing But Nonstop Plastic'

Mount Everest: Melting glaciers expose dead bodies. Several studies show that glaciers in the Everest region, as in most parts of the Himalayas, are fast melting and thinning.

US climate policy must protect forests and communities, not the forest industry

Trump administration forced to consider climate change impacts for the first time after court defeat over drilling permits. The Interior Department must now re-evaluate the impact that leases for oil and gas drilling will have on the nation's carbon output.